To Protect the Future
by Peggi J. Crawford
Summary: She came at the perfect time, although the situations could've been better. Now that she is helping them to find the Dragonballs things seem to be going by smoothly, but with her terrifying predictions coming true, is there any hope for the Z-Fighters?


I do not own Dragonball Z or any of its characters.  
I do not own any particular location mentioned in this story.  
I do not own Harmony.  
I do; however, own what little amount of plot is in this story! Yay me!

Peggi: I'm in the Dragonball Z stage at the moment and feeling like writing some fan-fiction for it, and it occurred to me, Harmony is one of the few people who have a major role in my OC fan-fiction, but no one knows how she arrived! So Harmy, this is for you =D

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It was rare that he came across children who didn't annoy him and even more rare that they would be seen anywhere near him to begin with. Most parents didn't like the idea of their children being anywhere near an alien, or even more frequently was he called 'monster'. This time, things were slightly different. He wasn't able to tell from this point of view whether or not she was even alive, and if she were breathing at all, it was so faint that he couldn't even see her chest move. Long blond hair fell in front of her face and he couldn't even see what she looked like. He tried to gently brush the blond away from her face so he could get a good look at her.

Some minor cuts and bruises but nothing too serious were seen on her body although he could tell from simply looking at her that she hadn't eaten or had anything to drink in quite some time. This may not have been too suspicious to anyone else, but Piccolo could tell without second guessing that this wasn't right. Perfectly manicured nails and both highlights and lowlights in her bleached blonde hair said she came from a nice home and was well taken care of. It was possible she'd run away for a life of crime, or even more likely with these marks on her body, she had been abused and run away from her otherwise perfect life.

Piccolo debated leaving her here, in the middle of nowhere, in the hot desert, but somehow it didn't seem right. He thought dropping her off at a hospital would be the best option, that way she would be taken care of and things would be resolved, but something didn't seem right and his instincts told him that this was something to take to Goku. His biggest clue that something simply wasn't right, was that they were literally _in the middle of no where_. She had to have been dropped off because there was no way that a small girl could've traveled this far without heat stroke and the starvation and thirst would've either killed her by now in the time it would've taken, or would've prevented her from getting this far. Someone brought her here, and for some reason he wanted to know _why_.

He scooped the blond into his arms and took flight, heading for where he knew everyone would be. Goku, Krillin, Yamcha, Bulma, Vegeta, Gohan, Chi Chi, Oolong and lord only knows how many others would be at Kame House for their weekend cookout. He'd set a pretty fast pace for himself and hoped he'd allowed for enough time to get there, but he felt the girl in his arms begin to move and grumble as she slowly regained conciousness. He suddenly realized that if she awoke from being knocked out in the arms of an alien while flying high above the ground, she might not react too well. He was almost there, he could see the island, he could see the smoke from the grill and now he could feel her struggling to get out of his grasp. He had just made it and was about to come in for a landing when she finally wriggled out of his arms and fell with a thud on the beach below. Piccolo landed in front of her a split second later. The others all ran up to see what was going on.

Blue eyes met with his and for a brief moment he thought she was about to panic, but a completely unexpected reaction came from the small girl.

"Thank you," she choked out almost in a whisper.

Goku was the only person who held out a hand to help the girl get back onto her feet, "well now, who's this Piccolo?"

"Heck if I know," he crossed his arms and eyed the girl strangely.

"I'm Harmony. Thank you so much for helping me, I don't think I'd have ever gotten out of that desert if you didn't pick me up."

No mention at all about the fact that she'd been _flown_ out of the desert. No concern at all about how it wasn't even a human who had saved her.

"What were you doing out there?" Piccolo figured he'd be very direct, as this girl seemed to be pretty direct herself.

"Well," she bit her lower lip almost as if she were planning on what to say, "there was this awful guy who took me as his prisoner and held me captive for 3 weeks and when his guard was down I planned an escape, but I didn't think it through as much as I'd hoped, they caught up to me pretty quick, but then there was this guy, he helped me to hide. But then he started to go crazy, talking about how he wanted to dominate all humans, said we were all just toys, then he shot me. With his hands. And no gun. But he didn't expect me to see it coming, so he thought I had been hit directly, but I wasn't, and he left me for dead. So I tried to travel on my own, and I don't remember much after that."

No one really knew how to react other than blinking in confusion. So someone had captured her, she got away, they caught her but someone saved her and then later turned on her and tried to kill her, but she evaded some sort of super-human attack because she saw it coming. Something simply didn't add up.

"Harmony," Goku was the one who was most patient and who seemed to get along well with children so he would probably have the most luck, "do you know the name of the man who was holding you prisoner?"

She took a deep breath in, and narrowed her eyes, "it was really weird, like some kind of nickname or something. I think I heard them call him Cell. Honestly, I don't know _what_he was, but he sure wasn't human, but he wasn't like, an animal or anything. I mean, he could've been in costume or something but he just looked weird. Like, _really_ weird. Like, don't want to meet him alone in a dark ally kind of weird."

Jaws dropped to the floor, fear crossed eyes and suddenly she realized she might've said something wrong, after all, these guys didn't look like they were completely human either.

"Not that there is anything _wrong_ with being not human, but he was just the _bad_ kind of not human. Like, I don't know how to explain it. He just was creepy."

"Wh-what exactly did this guy look like?" Krillin tried to ask bravely.

"Uh, kinda hard to explain. Um, I remember he had like pink, no maybe maroon colored eyes, really odd grayish colored skin, he kinda looked like a bug, like the kind of bugs that live under rocks or something. He had really weird green armor with spots on it, almost like a purple makeup thing going down the sides of his face. Geeze, I can't even begin to explain it!"

Without a doubt, it was Cell, but how he was still alive was a mystery, and even more of a mystery was why he would want to capture this girl. He had killed most of his victims without a moment's hesitation, drained energy and life from every living thing he came across, and if this was really him which didn't seem possible at all, he'd suddenly decided not to kill his prey?

"Something doesn't add up," Piccolo was becoming agitated with this girl and her story, "why would Cell have kept you around in the first place? If this were really him, _the_ Cell, he would've drained you and left you where you lay. Instead he kept you as a prisoner?"

"Hmm," she thought about what she was going to say before she said it, "not so much as a prisoner, as much as keeping me as a pet. I was kept in a cage and let out on a chain leash and a sharp metal collar around my neck. He'd toss treats to me if I was good and take his claw...nail...things to me if I was bad. He even had me groomed daily. It was really creepy. I thought at first maybe he was some sort of alien who thought humans were pets, but he never kept any of the others alive. He had this tube tail thing that he'd suck them to death with. It was really gross."

Now even more confusion. So now it went from prisoner to pet? She was kept like a dog and even groomed, yet she was covered in bruises. In accordance with her story the bruising also could've been from the second man who had saved her and then turned on her, which would've made more sense, but none of this was adding up anyway.

"Well, where did you first meet Cell?" Goku was still ever so patient.

"In the hills, in a dark lab in a cave in the middle of absolutely no where. I can show you. You seem to be looking for him. You're very interested in him. You didn't think you'd ever hear his name again, did you?"

Maybe she knew the truth about who _really_defeated Cell? "What makes you think that?" Goku fished a little bit with her.

"Based on your reactions. I thought Cell was a nickname but the second I said it you all had fear in your eyes like lighting just struck right in front of you. You must know who or what he is, and I don't think you're on friendly terms."

"No," more angrily from Piccolo than before, "we thought we'd destroyed him. But you said he was in the middle of no where, so why were you in the middle of no where? You must've been doing something you shouldn't have been."

"You're right," a smile that actually sent chills down every single spine on the island crossed her face, "I was stealing from him."


End file.
